SHOOTOUT AT CLINCH RIVER 871 



provided an easy answer: they took the new provisions out of the 

 proposed law, and placed them instead in the conference report 

 language describing the statutory provisions. 



LOBBYING THE WHITE HOUSE 



Now the lobbying was turned once again onto the White House. 

 Numerous issue papers were prepared to show how many programs 

 vital to the Nation's energy needs would go down the drain if the 

 entire ERDA authorization bill, now designed for the new Department 

 of Energy, were to be vetoed. Fossil, nuclear, solar and geothermal 

 programs — the heart of the energy package — would be without sup- 

 port if one little old section of the bill was the cause of destroying 

 the entire $6 billion bill. 



Flowers declared: 



I think we reached an extremely reasonable position, which will have strong 

 support in both the House and the Senate. 



The committee and congressional optimism proved unfounded. 

 The President vetoed the authorization bill on November 5- He 

 labelled the CRBR as "a large and unnecessarily expensive project, 

 which, when completed, would be technically obsolete and economi- 

 callv unsound.'' He also cited the one-House veto on uranium enrich- 

 ment pricing as one of the objections. 



TEAGUE's ANGRY REACTION TO VETO 



Teague's reaction was immediate, angry and strident: 



President Carter's first veto is a direct denial of his earlier claim that our energy 

 crisis is "the moral equivalent of war. " His veto reveals he does not know either his 

 enemies or allies in that war. 



The Congress recognized urgent realities when by big margins it voted to com- 

 promise with the President. His veto is unwarranted, harsh and arbitrary refusal to 

 understand the stern realities of our Nation's and the world's energy needs, and the 

 realities of the long and very difficult efforts by House and Senate Members to agree 

 on an energy authorization act that went much more than halfway in meeting his 

 demands. 



We on the Hill put months of strenuous, conscientious effort into producing an 

 effective energy research and development program which the President could wisely 

 and to his own satisfaction sign. He was poorly advised to so ruthlessly deny our 

 efforts. 



Teague's public statement on the veto descended into putting the 

 finger on personalities. He singled out the fact that neither Secretary 

 Schlesinger nor any other official of the Department of Energy took 

 part in the announcement of the veto: 



